Baseball

The earliest of Sunday's three MLB Division Series matchups will be between the Texas Rangers and Tampa Bay Rays, after Tampa notched a comeback win in Game 3 of the ALDS. Trailing 2-1 entering the eighth inning, the Rays got big hits from (among others) Carl Crawford and Carlos Pena en route to a season-saving win.

The Tampa Bay Rays' catching situation was a questionable one when the season started.  Once they acquired Kelly Shoppach, fantasy owners in two-catcher formats were scurrying for any information they could get on who was going to get the bulk of the playing time.  Was it going to be Shoppach?  Was it going to be the incumbent, Dioner Navarro?

Going into Saturday night's Game Three, the Yankees had to be feeling very confident of their chances to sweep the Twins.

They were up 2-0 on the Twins and they had history on their side since Minnesota had not won a playoff game against the Yankees since 2004.

Entering the MLB postseason, analysts and other fans of the sports seemed to be skeptical of the New York Yankees chances to repeat their World Championship run from last year. Much of this skepticism centered around the lack of quality pitching following CC Sabathia in the rotation.

However, in the Yankees sweep of the Minnesota Twins Sabathia's win ended up being the weakest performance, as Andy Pettitte and Phil Hughes pulled strung together very strong performance in their respective wins.

I'm sure that there are more than a handful of Cubs fans who are under the impression that the organization will acquire a few impact players this offseason, much like the post-2006 and post-2007 offseasons. However, the fact of the matter is that the team's current 40-man roster will need to be tweaked quite a bit before any additions can be made.

To begin with, only two players on the team's final 40-man roster can leave on their own volition: Aramis Ramirez and Xavier Nady.

In 2009, Davis enjoyed a taste of the bigs with a September call up.  In 2010, Davis is getting more than a taste, as the Rays turn to their 25-year-old rookie right hander to keep their playoff hopes alive.  Davis will make his postseason debut against one of the most fearsome offenses in baseball.  Oh yeah, there's this teeny tiny bit of pressure about a must-win game if the Rays season isn't to end.

The New York Yankees are the first team to advance in the postseason this year with their 6-1 win over the Minnesota Twins, who will spend another long, cold winter trying to figure out what went wrong again.

The Yankees dominated the Twins in all aspects of the game and appear poised to retain their title as World Series Champions.